More Nassau

We’ve extended our stay in Nassau by a few more days to wait out weather that would make for rough and rolly sailing. Think: your house on a wet, salty Tilt-a-Whirl for 6+ hours. So, we have taken the time to explore more of the area and to give one more shot at trying to resolve our customs issue.

Monday started early with Chris Parker’s 6:30 weather report which forecast the above conditions. With this information, we went back to bed for a little while and then leisurely cooked breakfast. Next up, we decided to venture out to find some Badedas bath soap (foams and lathers in sea water) which was recommended by Christie’s friend’s parents at dinner the other night.

While the grocery store didn’t carry it, Badedas was easy to find at the pharmacy. We’ll let you know how our first salt water bath goes (the idea is to get clean in the ocean, then rinse off with fresh water to help conserve water onboard). The pharmacy was very well stocked with many brands we recognized, but as with the grocery store everything was about twice as much.

We then walked over to Paradise Island to check the dominant feature of the Nassau skyline, Atlantis Resort. While we can see it directly across the harbor from our marina, it was about a 3 mile walk each way and crossing the 70′ high bridge connecting New Providence to Paradise Island gave us a gorgeous view of the horizon and made our boats look like little rafts down below.

Paradise Island was lush and well manicured, a stark difference from the parts of Nassau that we’d seen thus far. We walked through all the areas of Atlantis that non-guests are permitted, but opted out of the $39 per person charge to see areas like the aquarium and beach. No biggie as we’ll soon be diving into into the live aquariums of the Exumas.

One thing we didn’t want to miss was the Dale Chihuly glass instillations within the Atlantis Casino. The Temple of the Moon and Temple of the Sun were as intricate and elegant as we had heard. Well worth the trip over.

After lunch back on the boats, the guys headed out to find some new batteries for Storyville. A few hours later, they returned successfully with plans to install them the next day.

Everyone went back to their respective boats to get cleaned up, eat dinner and then met back at Storyville for movie night. We all sat in the cockpit and watched “Inception” while enjoying popcorn. The movie was a great mind-bender and kept us up past our bedtime. At midnight it was back to Kaleo for another rolly night from the high winds and rushing current through the harbour.

Tuesday started with another trek to the customs office that involved a 15-minute walk along a street with no sidewalk and then a 25 minute jitney ride to the south side of Nassau. While we appreciated getting to see new areas of town, we may have been able to come up with a better way to spend the morning. We entered the refunds department expecting more of the same run-around and bureaucracy, but feel like finally may have made some progress. Matt met with a very helpful official who asked a few questions and then said our check would be mailed to the States in about 5-6 weeks. He also called the harbor office to point out that this sort of thing shouldn’t be happening as it’s a great inconvenience to visitors. That was refreshing to hear and we left knowing we had done all we could do to get a refund.

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting (Christie), doing some boat projects (Matt) and caught up on a little laundry (both of us).

Same drill tomorrow. We’ll start by checking the weather and then make plans based on the forecast. By the looks of it today, the winds may pick up even stronger (possibly to 50 knots in some areas!) so we may be Nassau bound another day. We’re so close to the more remote tropical islands and are really ready to dive off the boat into our new back yard!